Stroke Research

Our stroke research is led by “clinician-researchers,” whose hands-on expertise with patient care keeps their research focused on improving patient outcomes. Below are brief descriptions of select projects that are currently ongoing.

Patient-Directed Activity Intervention

Our research is aimed at improving motor function and quality of life of people following stroke to reduce their risk of further disease and disability. For individuals to maximize their motor function it is important that they get as many opportunities to complete therapeutic activities, like physical and occupational therapy, as possible during inpatient rehabilitation. Unfortunately, people often do not get enough time completing repetitions of therapeutic activities, which has been linked to poor function and health over time and is made worse by the fact that length of stay for patients following stroke continues to get shorter. This presents clinicians with a challenge to identify novel ways to provide people with more activity time to improve motor function after a stroke. This clinician-driven project, led by Molly Trammell, Priyanka Kapoor, and Drs. Driver and Swank, aims to identify if patient-directed activity can be successfully added to the inpatient rehabilitation program of people who have had a stroke. The patient-directed activity intervention is increasing the patient’s daily activity time by 50%, and allows people to become more confident and competent with completing the activities before discharge.